The Misesian Paradox of Interventionism

The first of these pertains to what might be called the Misesian “paradox of interventionism.” We have seen that Mises used words such as illogical, unworkable, unsuitable, self-defeating, and contradictory to describe interventionism. In addition, while he did not use the term, interventionism as a system was in Mises’s estimation highly unstable, a mere “interlude.” Among the alternative systems, therefore, one could easily come to imagine a priori that it would be the least enduring. Yet casual observation reveals that, among existing politico-economic systems, the interventionist mixed economy, all of its contradictions notwithstanding, is by far the most popular, widespread, and persistent of them all.

--Sanford Ikeda, Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism, Foundations of the Market Economy (London: Routledge, 2003), 46.